United States Patent Application No, 20050210274, entitled “Apparatus and method for intellectual property protection using the microprocessor serial number”, describes a method for the creation, distribution and execution of software programmes with the use of apparatuses specially designated for encryption and decryption of the software programmes, using at least a part of a serial number or other identifying number stored in a processing unit as the encryption key, the processing unit being the execution environment for decrypting the encrypted software programmes before and then executing the software programmes thus decrypted.
Protection of intellectual property for software programmes or executable code is the creation, distribution and execution of software programmes with the use of apparatuses specially designated for encryption and decryption of the software programmes, using at least a part of a serial number or other identifying number stored in a processing unit as the encryption key, the processing unit being the execution environment for decrypting the encrypted software programmes before and then executing the software programmes thus decrypted.
Protection of intellectual property for software programmes or executable code is essential for innovation and the advance of society based on intellectual activities. Therefore there have been numerous efforts or methods designed for protecting the value of intellectual activities represented in software programmes or executable code; including the use of checking for correct password, checking for encrypted digital key file, checking for signature provided in hardware, checking for correct password through activation procedure over internet, etc. The use of such methods however is either easily bypassed or requires the deployment of specially designed hardware. These methods therefore are either simply ineffective or adding hardware costs and not suiting to general-purpose computing or processing environment.
The problem encountered in the efforts for protecting intellectual activities expressed in the form of software programmes or executable code is therefore how such software programmes or executable code can be prevented from being simply copied or hacked and then executed in a general-purpose computing or processing environment. Uniquely identifiable information, such as a serial number or its derivative, retrieved from hardware used as a key for encryption/decryption of software programmes or executable code with hardly breakable or unbreakable algorithm can be a solution safeguarding such intellectual activities against those simple yet effective pirating activities involving copying and simple hacking.
The patent application mentioned above is such an attempt for solving the problem. This however involves the use of specially designed apparatuses for such purpose that does not constitute a general-purpose computing or processing environment and the decryption procedure and the decrypted software programmes stored in the designed execution environment can also be copied out and pirated by people gaining access to such environment. So such environment has to be a highly secured environment, not to be accessed by the ordinary users, customers or clients of the general mass. In the way described in the aforesaid patent application, the encrypted software programmes cannot run without being decrypted; and for the encrypted software programmes to be executable, they have to be decrypted before they are run so that the decrypted software programmes are simply executables which can be copied and runnable in any machines on the same architectural computing or processing platform with a processing unit provided with any serial number. The decrypted software programmes therefore simply become unprotected executables having all functionalities in an unencrypted form that can simply be copied and run without the need of even simple hacking.